News

Report: Moving Data To The Heart Of Health Systems

The 2018 Future Health Index analyzes data and conducts interviews with leaders that are making value-based healthcare happen around the world, to produce practical insights that healthcare leaders can apply in order to accelerate their path towards that goal.

Tags

Member editorial board ICT&health

Artur Olesch

Share this article

Research conducted for the FHI explores three technologies will prove crucial in advancing integration and enabling data to be used more effectively: digital identity tools (such as universal electronic health records), data analytics and artificial intelligence, consumer wearables. (photo Philips)

Data has become one of the most important resources in modern healthcare. The collection, sharing and analyzing of data can help identify disease earlier, make hospitals become faster organizations, and transform the patient experience. It is through data that the outcomes that define value in healthcare are tracked, measured and improved.

The Future Health Index 2018 looks at how the obstacles facing the integration of EHRs and the application of AI in healthcare can be overcome. Universal Electronic Health Records (EHRs) make the collection and exchange of healthcare data much easier. Artificial Intelligence (AI) can mine that information for connections and insights that promote faster, more accurate diagnosis and better outcomes.

Data has become the lifeblood of modern healthcare systems

The report offers five key recommendations to drive better collection, analysis and use of healthcare data in order to deliver value based healthcare:

Get regulation right. Clearly defined policies and robust data privacy and security standards at the national level build confidence in all parts of the healthcare continuum and help healthcare institutions develop their own data codes of practice, as well as encouraging healthcare professionals and the general population to collect, share and analyze data with greater confidence. Only 35% of the general population know when to share data with their healthcare professional and just 35% know the correct way to share data.

Modernize education. Healthcare professionals won’t demand EHRs and AI tools at work if they don’t learn to rely on them during medical training. Increasing healthcare professionals’ adoption of these tools must start with their integration into medical school curriculums. FHI data shows 89% of nurses and 88% of doctors believe EHR integration to be extremely or somewhat important, but a Stanford Medicine study states that 71% of physicians believe EHRs are a major contributor to healthcare professional burnout.

End top-down implementation. Healthcare professionals are unlikely to adopt new tools when they’re presented as a ‘fait accompli’ by technologists. Creating EHRs and AI solutions in collaboration with both healthcare professionals and the general population will have a significant impact on successful integration. Of the 16 countries covered in the FHI, those with ‘universal’ EHRs have a higher average Value Measure than those that don’t (47.29 on average versus 39.67).

Prove and explain value. Both healthcare professionals and patients need to be able to easily understand how data collection and analytics tools make a difference. Constantly measuring and communicating outcomes will create a body of evidence that will help bridge the understanding gap. Without this, there’s the risk that concerns about these technologies will dominate the discussion. FHI data shows that more than 55% of the general population would least want their health data to be made public if they were hacked.